NVIDIA QuadroFX 3700 512 MB

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Specifications

As mentioned in the prior page, NVIDIA’s new QuadroFX 3700 card is slipping into a price point right between the QuadroFX 1700 and the QuadroFX 5600. Let’s see how it stacks up, on paper, before we look at NVIDIA’s final, shipping product.

Sitting between the QuadroFX 1700 and 5600 lineups, the QuadroFX 3700 fits as snug as a bump-mapped, HDR-lit bug in a rug. While the QuadroFX 3700 is based on the newest of the three GPU architectures (NVIDIA’s fairly recent G92), in terms of raw graphics processing power it does have substantially less compared to the high-end QuadroFX 5600 card. The QuadroFX 3700 isn’t too far off though, as it only has a few less shader processors (112 vs. 128), slightly lower clock speed (500 MHz vs. 600 MHz), and has a 256-bit memory interface compared to a 384-bit interface on the 5600 card. Considering the massive $1,000 difference in price, the gaps between the 3700 and 5600 series card tend to look less significant.

The big differences here between NVIDIA’s new high-end and ultra high-end cards are memory and overall board size. The QuadroFX 5600 card has three times the memory as the 3700 card, but also is substantially larger and more difficult to cool. While the QuadroFX 5600 requires a massive PCB with a dual-slot cooler, the QuadroFX 3700 runs on a standard sized PCB with a single-slot cooling system. The QuadroFX 3700 also has a fairly un-impressive 512 MB of memory for a card at this price point. Considering memory prices are so cheap, we would have hoped that NVIDIA would kick it up to 1GB to really set it apart from its other G92 brethren. However, all in all, the QuadroFX 3700 has a strong feature set for a workstation product at this price point, at least on paper. Let’s take a look at this card in greater detail.